Call for participation in the IV Latin American and Caribbean Biennial on Early Childhood, Childhood and Youth
Call for papers until March 9, 2020
In November 2020, we will hold the fourth edition of the Biennial in Manizales, seeking to positively impact the lives of children and young people in Latin America and the Caribbean. This will be achieved through comparative analysis of contexts, the development of research processes, the participatory construction of alternatives, direct dialogue with public policymakers and government actors at different geographical scales across the region, and the exploration of partnerships between states and social organizations, among other initiatives. The Biennial is therefore the largest forum in Latin America for collaboration between academia, public policy, and social organizations.
This fourth Biennial will focus on inequalities, displacements, and diversities as its epistemic themes. We present a brief rationale for each of these themes:
Inequalities: Within the framework of a multidimensional approach to contemporary inequalities, this axis will prioritize inequalities from a generational perspective, as well as territorial and educational inequalities. It is also expected to include other areas such as those related to the world of work, migration, culture, ethnicity and race, and gender.
Thinking about the axis of inequalities within the framework of the “IV Latin American and Caribbean Biennial on Early Childhood, Childhoods and Youth” forces us to position ourselves from these inequalities and beyond them, allowing us to turn our gaze back to the forms of resistance, the subtractions, the counterflows and the practices of re-existence that community-based organizations, of girls, boys and young people, of women, of workers, of sexual-gender diversities, peasants, indigenous people, Afro-descendants, academics, and intellectuals deploy in their territories as forms of construction and demand for a dignified and just life.
Displacements, Migrations, Memories, Agency and Collective Mobilization in Contexts of Violence: The axis proposes: to open the reflection on the different violences present in the Latin American and Caribbean context, in particular those present in conditions of mobility, migration or forced displacement, conditions within which multiple violations occur and the subjectivities and identities of children and youth also emerge in processes of political socialization and practices of agency, militancy and political mobilization; and to understand the dynamics of violence and social mobilities and the role that memory plays in processes of participation of children and young people; To construct perspectives from the social sciences, relevant to the Latin American and Caribbean context, that guide studies on childhood and youth in contexts of violence and mobility, aimed at political socialization as a way for social transformation and the reconstruction of community fabrics; to complicate the view on the socialization processes of children and young people in these contexts, based on the recognition of the importance of relational processes in the construction of their subjectivities, identifying the transformative potential of the relationships and participation of children and young people as active social agents in the construction of the country and the continent; and to rescue the fundamental role in the processes of agency and political mobilization of the recognition and re-signification of memories that make visible the voices of children and young people who have lived in contexts of violence and conflict, from their powers and their political subjectivity.
Diversities: Human beings live, know, and exist in the world to achieve conditions of well-being, a good life, and a good existence. Regarding the processes of knowledge, diversities are fundamental to guiding action and coexistence among human beings. We need to recognize Afro-descendant, Indigenous, and mixed-race children and youth with different sexual orientations, languages, and ways of representing the world. These recognitions are emerging on the Latin American and Caribbean scene, where many countries experience authoritarian and totalitarian political conditions fostered by governments that impose monolithic thinking and absolute truths, leading to a disregard for ethnic tensions, gender discrimination, immigration, refugees, and xenophobia. These situations endanger democracy, which has been seized by reactionary conservatives. Faced with such uncertainty, this South (Latin America and the Caribbean) points the way forward for us and for the world, from the perspective of multiculturalism and interculturalism in tension; from collective and subjective identities. These are new readings of knowledge, Latin American and Caribbean epistemologies that permeate the social sciences, education, and everyday life.
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